Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Not long ago, I was contacted by a lady that lives in a home that was built on the rear-most part of my ancestors property in New England. She enjoys genealogy but her current quest is the result of a ghost that lives in her home and sometimes says “Hello” to her family in a clear intelligible friendly voice when they are climbing the back stairs.

Those occurrences prompted her to start a search of the genealogy of her property through the years. My ancestors owned the land her home sits on for four or five generations of the family and are hence candidates for the possible source of the friendly ghost.

I can’t image them hanging around the property all these years. They were never idle in life and I doubt if their personality has changed in the afterlife. I suppose a passing “Hello” wouldn’t be out of character though if they were in the neighborhood.

We all have unusual or unique experiences when we are engaged in family history research. If you are like me, you too sometimes hear someone speak to you when you are deep in uffish genealogy thought or hot on the trail of that final piece of evidence that will open the door in an ancestral brickwall.

It happens. It is so common place that it hardly bears noting in our research lives. The arrival of unexpected snail or email with genealogy data and records attached is expected. The longer we engage in genealogical research, the more common the experiences become in our quest.

Their frequency and magnitude seem to be directly proportional to several factors: New researchers earnestly working to find their ancestral trees and more seasoned researchers who post, share and ‘do something’ with the data they find in their hard-won research victories.

Were I to record the thousands of unique assist experiences I’ve enjoyed over the years, my fingers would long tire of typing and another large storage drive would be required to hold all of the data bits from the stories.

No, I’m not advocating that you start recording the silence around you to hear unseen or unheard voices, nor do I advocate anyone seeking contact with the spirit world. I’m just appreciative when an unexpected contact, data attachment or the occasional pat on the head happens just when it is most needed in my ancestral quest.

Of course, it doesn’t hurt to say “Good Night” when you close down your workstation in the wee hours of the night. Who’s going to hear you except those helpful ancestors that are watching over your shoulder….